"Olaf Stapledon - Light and the Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

government put up a strong resistance against both. Ever since the age of the commercial expansion of Europe Tibet had fought
for the preservation of native culture. Foreigners had been excluded from the country. Foreign loans for exploitation of Tibet's
natural resources had been refused. Little by little, however, the barriers had broken down. European and American, and
subsequently Russian and Chinese, goods and ideas had found their way into the high valleys and plains. Modern aids to
agriculture, modern methods of transport, the cinema, the radio, seemed to threaten to destroy the individuality of this last
stronghold of unmechanized culture.

But in the case of Tibet, forewarned was indeed forearmed. After a period of internal conflict an economically progressive, but
culturally conservative, party was able to seize power and effect a revolution in the economic life of the country. The new rulers,
the new advisers of the Grand Lama, wisely distinguished between the material achievements of modernism and its social and
moral absurdities. They undertook to modernize their country materially and even to some extent mentally, while preserving the
essentials of the native cultural life. In this they were but following in the footsteps of the Japanese, but with the tragic example
of that upstart modern society ever before them. Moreover in the Tibetan culture there was something far deeper, more spiritual
and more hardy than in the culture of Japan. The natural poverty of the country, too, had proved a blessing. Powerful neighbours
regarded Tibet as not worth systematic exploitation or conquest; and the belated native attempt to develop the country without
foreign aid could not produce, even if it had been intended to do so, anything like the flood of luxury and the insane lust for
commercial power which had enervated the dominant class in Europe. Physically Tibetan resources were indeed negligible. Save
for certain remaining deposits of gold, mostly in the eastern part of the country, there was little mineral wealth, and agriculture
was hobbled by severe shortage of water. Even pasture was at first desperately meagre. Sheep and cattle, however, and
particularly the hardy native yak, formed the mainstay of the population. The government undertook a great irrigation scheme;
with the willing and even heroic co-operation of the people. Within a few decades, it was hoped, much of the country would be
capable of intensive cultivation.

But the main resources of Tibet were the people themselves. A pacific, industrious, and sturdy folk, they had been encouraged to
regard themselves not as a backward race doomed to succumb to foreign powers, but as the custodians of the ancient wisdom in a
period of worldwide darkness. Some of their recent leaders had suggested also that the Tibetan people must now become the
pioneers of a new and comprehensive wisdom in which ancient and modern should be combined more significantly than was
possible, for instance, in the depraved communities of Russia and China.




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Darkness and the Light




The leaders of the first Tibetan revolution, though they saw vaguely the need to modify the native culture, were not in practice
able to carry forward the great process of development which they had started. There had to be a second revolution, which was
led by the forward- looking section of the Lama class, with the backing of the people. This new class of leaders had come into
being through the first revolution. A measure of frugal prosperity had increased the people's leisure and thoughtfulness. Though
they were eager for certain physical improvements to their country, they had escaped the dangerous spell of modern
industrialism, for that simple faith had by now been discredited among thoughtful people throughout the world. Though these
'servants of the light', as they called themselves, welcomed the scientific education which the government offered them, they also
welcomed its insistence on the ancient wisdom. Indeed the young began flocking into the monasteries, and particularly to the
houses of the reformed, modernistic monastic orders. The leaders of this new Lama class were persons who, after being well
grounded in the principles of Buddhism, had in their maturity been greatly influenced by modern ideas without being false to the
essence of the native culture. Most of them had spent a year or two in China or India, many in Russia, some in America, where
they had been impressed by the Friends. Foreign contacts had made them realize fully the superstition and hypocrisy of the worst